FEAR 3 review – The Ring vs. Call Of Duty

First person shooter meets survival horror, as the F.E.A.R. saga offers up a new co-operative story campaign and some innovative new multiplayer modes.

F.3.A.R. (360) â better at horror than it is at spelling

Mixing survival horror with a first person shooter has always seemed an odd idea. If you want to scare someone in a video game arming them to the teeth with lethal weaponry goes against every rule in the book. Nobody ever seems to have told the makers of F.E.A.R. though and this continues the series’ nonconformist attempts to see how much accepted wisdom they can ignore in one game.

Unfortunately the first sacred cow to be slaughtered is the idea that the player should have any clue as to who they are supposed to be playing as or what they are doing. We’ve played both the previous games and were confused in seconds.

As with so many video games the tone of the plot is far more important than the details, but the basics involve you taking the role of the ‘Point Man’, the supersoldier from the first game. As the game starts he’s held captive, but aided in his escape by his cannibalistic dead brother Fettel – who he killed in the first game. Oh, and what amounts to the girl out of The Ring, who is also your mum, is still out and about and trying to cause Armageddon.

Or at least we think that’s what’s going on. Like we said it’s hard to tell and ultimately not very important. Especially for the first couple of hours, where the game plays like a standard first person shooter. Well, standard except for the quickly recharging bullet time effect and the unusually good gunplay and artificial intelligence – as well as a new cover system.

Apart from the cover system these are all hallmarks of the series so far and although the graphics are no longer state-of-the-art, the cunning of your opponents most certainly is. They’re not entirely consistent, but catch them at a good moment and the opposing soldiers will take cover sensibly, retreat and even outflank you. What’s more they’ll often shout out their plans to each other, while giving spookily accurate accounts of your location (‘He’s behind the table!’).

A lot of it is smoke and mirrors but it’s far better than most shooters manage. As is the effort expended trying to make it feel like you really are holding and firing a gun, with excellent controls and a great sense of weight and recoil.

The level design is a lot less accomplished though and despite being entirely linear it’s incredibly easy to get lost. There is a better variety of settings than the previous games though, including – shock – some in broad daylight.

If you’re wondering what any of this has to do with being a survival horror the answer often is not very much. Despite John Carpenter (director of Halloween and The Thing) helping out with the cut scenes the game really isn’t very scary, or at least not in a supernatural sense. You’re still scared that an enemy solider is going to put a bullet between your eyes but enduring the game’s occasional jump scares doesn’t take a particularly steady nerve.

Especially as this sequel’s most important new feature is that other option guaranteed to keep nerves at bay: a friendly hand to hold. Or rather a friendly hand to create a diversionary tactic while you pick off the bad guys from behind cover.

The whole game has clearly been designed with co-operative play in mind from the start and only begrudgingly offers up the option to play on your own. As you might already have guessed the other player takes the role of Fettel, but since he’s a ghost he can’t just pick up a gun and use it like the Point Man. Instead he’s able to possess other characters and has access to various telekinetic powers, the ability to shoot energy bolts and to generate a shield for his bro’.

Strangely you don’t get to choose who plays as who though – the host is always Point Man. Whether this is supposed to be that way or is awaiting an inevitable patch we don’t know but the rest of the multiplayer options are even more awkward to navigate and currently highly unreliable in terms of connection.

It’s a shame because the multiplayer modes eschew the normal Deathmatch and Capture the Flag options in favour of play modes that make better use of the game’s peculiar features. The best is F***** Run, which has you and your co-op pals trying to outrun an oncoming wall of darkness and ends the minute one of you is killed.

Soul King is also good and has everyone playing as soul-sucking wraiths, killing off enemies but also turning on each other to steal their own souls. Soul Survivor is similar but has only one player as a wraith. There’s also a conventional Horde-style survival mode, but it’s still good fun.

The multiplayer connection problems are an issue that we assume will be fixed, but the other main problem is that the story mode is so ridiculously short. Five hours really is becoming the norm for action games nowadays, but when a game like this only really hits its stride in the last one or two it’s never going to be enough.

This makes F.3.A.R. feel even more cramped, with at least two or three completely separate game concepts all living in only relative harmony together. If each element could’ve been properly refined this would’ve been a thoroughbred classic, but even in its more ragged state it remains one of the year’s most compelling shooters.

In Short:A mix of influences this random shouldn’t work but the willingness to blend genres and experiment with multiplayer pays off despite the flaws.

Pros:Excellent combat and artificial intelligence. Co-op elements are interesting, with a completely different secondary character. Great range of unusual multiplayer modes.

Cons:Very short single-player campaign with a completely incoherent story and bland hero. Online options are currently highly unstable. Poor graphics and not scary.Score:7/10